A need presently exists for an effective and efficient automated system for continuously placing and positioning individual boneless tenders and other poultry, meat, and fish product pieces on conveyor belt for further processing. A need particularly exists for an effective and efficient automated system for continuously positioning, spacing, and orienting marinated and/or breaded tender or strip products on a conveyor belt for cooking, freezing, or other downstream operations. The proper positioning, spacing, and orientation of tender or strip products is necessary in order to prevent the product pieces from freezing or sticking together and is also important for optimizing downstream treatments, increasing production rates, preventing product damage, and increasing product consistency, uniformity, and quality.
Marinated or breaded chicken tenders and other similar poultry, meat, and fish products are difficult to properly spread, space, and align across the width of a conveyor system. Unfortunately, the systems proposed heretofore for automating this process have not been adequate, particularly with regard to the need to provide sufficient spacing and separation of the product pieces. Consequently, the process of placing and properly positioning the product pieces on a conveyor is typically performed manually and can require several workers, thus significantly increasing the cost of production and also presenting an increased potential for possible product contamination.
Previously, an attempt has been made to automate the process of positioning tender or strip products on a conveyor by feeding the tender or strip products onto the conveyor using a vibrating shaker tray. Shaker tray devices are commercially available from Key Technologies and others. The use of a shaker tray for feeding the product pieces directly to the conveyor has been somewhat effective for distributing the mass of tender or strip products across the width of the conveyor and for flattening the mass into a single layer, but has not provided consistent or adequate spacing or alignment.
Attempts have also been made to use vacuum systems to place individual product pieces onto a conveyor. Unfortunately, however, the vacuum lifting mechanism tends to pull marinade or breading from the product at the point of contact. In addition, the delivery of the product to the vacuum system itself must be precisely controlled in order to ensure continuous consistent operation. Further, a single vacuum system is only capable of placing one piece of the product on the conveyor at a time. Multiple vacuum units are required to load a convey belt to its full capacity. Vacuum systems are also typically very costly to purchase and maintain.